


ad astra

by TheGoodDoctor



Category: Historical Farm (UK TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Domestic Fluff, Edwardian Period, Established Relationship, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:34:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24470635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoodDoctor/pseuds/TheGoodDoctor
Summary: A dance, and a dinner, and a musing on the nature of work and reward and time.
Relationships: Peter Ginn/Ruth Goodman/Alex Langlands
Comments: 10
Kudos: 18





	ad astra

**Author's Note:**

> an edited version of this was written for my mother, who requested that she be allowed to read about "[my] victorian farmers" as a birthday present. technically these are edwardian, but never mind. so happy birthday, mum.
> 
> set in the same universe as my other historical edwardian story, in adoration of simple pleasures, but quite some time afterwards.

He is not, precisely, attempting to hide. It is pure coincidence that he has acquired a full mug of beer and is standing in the corner furthest from the dancing, partially obscured by one of the Mudge boys who  _ just happens _ to be built like an ancient oak tree; he is  _ not _ avoiding the dancing, because he promised Ruth that he wouldn’t.

Peter sips his beer and leans against the wall to take the weight off one foot, then the other. It has been a long day.

Ruth doesn’t seem to be feeling it yet; with her huge skirts whirling out around her, she seems to be floating amongst the other dancers more than moving by earthly means. Her smile flashes prettily when it catches on the golden light of the gas lamps, meticulously polished to brilliance in order to spill the greatest volume of hazy, honeyed gilding upon the dancers and the silverware and the village’s finest clothes, and with every skip and swirl Ruth seems almost to glow. The little church harmonium has been co-opted for the evening and the young ladies are taking it in turns to belt out the latest tunes rattled down from London on the post train and practised to distraction in the previous few weeks. It holds its own well, for such a small thing against such thundering feet, but like as not it has never in its life been so furiously pedalled. But to see the village smile is well worth worn-out treadles; the vicar is twirling his wife with far greater enthusiasm than skill, and neither are sparing a thought for their poor precious instrument.

For the harvest is over for yet another year: all barns are well-stuffed with grain, all yards are scattered with hay ricks and all parlours are packed with vegetables and preserves. It is as if the village has been holding a great breath, and now, at last, it may relax. How better to rest, after all, than to hurl oneself up and down the village hall for hours until the soles of one’s boots fall off.

Peter shifts his feet beneath him. He and Alex spent the daylight hours wrangling sheep into a vaguely herd-like shape and driving them down the hills into safer winter pastures than the wild and windy moors high above the river valley; it had taken the better part of the dawn just to get up into the gorse and heather, and somehow even longer to head back downhill. “Next year,” Alex had said, leaning on his smart new shepherd’s crook, “we’ll get a dog.”

Peter had just pushed the brim of his cap back off his forehead with the back of his hand and nodded. They had said that last year, too, and yet the only difference between this year and the last is the crook. Not that it has had a great impact on their herding: sadly deprived of any lost lambs trapped in crevasses, Alex has spent more time prodding Peter with the length of hazel than he has rescuing wayward sheep. He’s tremendously proud of the thing and hasn’t had the use of it which he had been so eagerly awaiting, and so Peter indulges the boyish enthusiasm as long as he isn’t too bruised by the end of it.

Besides, Alex smiles so charmingly about it, and Peter is weak, so weak, for charming smiles and sun-gleaming curls and the opportunity to lean into Alex’s space and spend the day basking there. He cannot quite be sure whom he is most indulging, Alex or himself.

Their return to the farmhouse for dinner had been greeted by scented steam, light and teasing and pouring from countless hot jamjars, covered dishes and even a loaf of bread wrapped in cloth. Following their noses, Peter and Alex had wandered into the kitchen with its promising smells: sweet, sticky blackberries and apples and strawberries from the market garden; something savoury and thyme-scented; the comforting familiarity of pastry - and then Ruth had flown upon them, beating back grubby, scrounging fingers with a wooden spoon. “Don’t you want help to pack it all up for the dance?” Alex tried winningly. He even had his hands tucked neatly behind his back, which Peter thought was a good innocent touch; he looked like a schoolboy attempting to have his cricket ball returned to him without admitting guilt over the broken window. Peter added a charming smile to the effort, quite confident in their inevitable failure.

Ruth forced another yard out of them in retreat. She looked rather less stern than she was attempting to be; her mouth twisted as if biting back a smile, and nothing could disguise the crinkling at the corners of her eyes. They can read every detail of one another’s faces, now, too well-beloved to harbour secrets. “Don’t you want something to eat at the dance?” Ruth said, raising an eyebrow sharply. “I know you too well, Alex. I think I shall probably manage.”

Alex snapped his fingers in defeat, as if there had ever been another possible outcome, and sat on the bench by the door to take a brush to his boots. “It’s a compliment to your cooking, Ruth,” he said, winking up at Peter.

“And here was I, thinking you were just greedy,” she called back over the clanking of various pots and preserving pans. Alex feigned deep offence to make Peter laugh, and Ruth had given up on hiding her amusement by the time she returned to the door with a great sticky saucepan under one arm. “Soak this for me, would you,” she instructed Peter.

“Yes ma’am,” he said happily, trotting across the yard to the pump. It’s something for which their farm is particularly fortunate, this easily-accessible clean water, and it could be argued that Ruth could fetch her own water, since it’s so near - but Peter doesn’t mind it. He likes to do things for them; he would work to the bone that those he loves most might live in marginally greater comfort.

“We simply appreciate everything you do,” Alex continued, widening his eyes and looking up at Ruth under a forehead of brown curls, grown long over the busy harvest season. He looked rather boyish and endearing because of it and, worst of all, knows it; neither Ruth nor Peter are quite immune.

“You need a haircut,” Ruth told him sternly, face reddening very slightly along the rise of her cheekbones, and vanished back into the kitchen. 

Peter swirled some water around the pot and lugged it back to the doorway to soak within Ruth’s easy reach for later. “Told you that would stop working eventually,” he muttered, but Alex just held up a hand for him to wait.

“Open,” Ruth said rather resignedly, returning from the kitchen depths to shove a teaspoon each of warm jam into their waiting mouths. Blackberry, dark and sweet, filled Peter’s mouth with abrupt and vivid flavour: the taste of late summer and roaming the hedgerows after Church to fill bags and pockets and gathered aprons with bruise-black fruit, fingers and faces stained with temptations not resisted. He hummed happily and Alex beamed up at him, smug and satisfied. Ruth shook her head, secretly pleased. “Children, the pair of you.”

“Ta,” Alex said happily and ducked in, quick and sharp, to press a kiss under her eye. Ruth fussed and swatted at him, smiling despite herself as Alex squeezed her hand and ducked into the kitchen. 

Peter reached out, cupping her face like the finest porcelain in his broad hand, and she leaned into the contact as he brushed a thumb over her cheekbone and the slight, sticky kiss stain left there. “Menace,” Ruth said fondly of Alex, speaking with her lips brushing the heel of his palm and her breath tickling his inner wrist, sending shivers down his spine.

There was bread and cheese to be had for dinner, but Ruth had wanted the vast feast she had spent the morning on into the gig and down to the village hall as soon as possible. “You realise, Ruth, that - what with our farm being a small one, and you only being one person - you don’t have to produce a greater quantity of food than the ladies with several daughters and entire orchards,” Peter had pointed out, holding a large hotpot wrapped carefully in cloths and still radiating heat through the thick layers into his palms, and waiting for Alex to shuffle other dishes in the gig to make space for this last dish.

“I am perfectly aware of that,” Ruth had said absently, frowning slightly at the gig. “Never mind, I suppose I shall just hold that one. Of course I know; Mrs Kent informed me only last week that I needn’t trouble myself, since we are  _ so _ inexperienced and represent such a small holding. Why, we’ve only been farming here two years and could not possibly be expected to produce anything at all!” Peter had handed her up into the gig, frowning slightly at her very light tone; on her other side, Alex had already progressed to glowering at the reins in his hands. “Oh, and she very kindly offered to donate some jam to us, should we seem liable to starve over the winter,” Ruth had added brightly, and Peter had cast another glance over the gig filled with food and beer and, indeed, jam.

“Don’t suppose you’ve anything else hidden away?” he had said hopefully as the horse began its steady progression down to the village on the riverside.

“I’ve dug out a jar of preserved cherries, to say thank you for her generosity,” Ruth had said, almost entirely straight-faced.

The wheels rattle gently over the clay road, hooves beating with comfortable regularity over the trodden earth. “Well done, darling,” Alex had said, warmly but quietly, as if Mrs Kent might vault over the hedgerows lining the lane and begin pressing jars of preserves or one of her daughters upon him at any moment. For all that Alex is a deeply inexperienced farmer and a complete foreigner to Devon, he has crucially spent much of his youth in Society and is thus considered a step up to several village matriarchs despite his obvious lack of present connection to such a world after inheriting the farm here from an estranged relation, employing Ruth and Peter to help him keep it in good shape, and then escaping from his overbearing aunt by climbing out of a first-floor window. Regardless, the selection of eligible young men in the area is not so great that he can escape various match-making attempts: Alex finds this somewhat terrifying; traitorously, Ruth and Peter find it rather funny.

_ “Aren’t you upset? Don’t you love me?” Alex moans, burying his face in the pillow, and Peter has to press a hand over his mouth against an undignified snort. He is pinched for it, but the pain in his arm is immediately soothed with a thumb so he gathers he is, mostly, forgiven. _

_ “Oh, yes, darling,” Ruth tells him soothingly, stroking a hand down his spine and grinning at Peter. “We’re quite aware how much of a catch you are.” _

Speaking of, where  _ is _ \- ah, yes, there. Alex has had rather less success at avoiding the dancing, or perhaps isn’t trying so hard, despite having worked just as hard all day. Pushing and pulling him through the right steps is one of Ruth’s cousins, Maggie; personally, Peter suspects they would enjoy greater success if Maggie could stop laughing long enough to explain her instructions to poor, bewildered Alex, or simply wait for the caller to return from where the publican is dishing out beer and start shouting at people. Alex looks like he’s lost control of his own feet and his long, gangling limbs, and is simply smiling through his confusion, content to be led through a dosie-do and stumble about making a mess of stripping the willow. He’s grinning brightly and causing chaos and confusion with every step and when the music draws to a close he bows enormously, watching with pride as Maggie applauds his poor efforts. Peter finds himself grinning broadly without having noticed when he began; perhaps it is this, bright as a beacon, that gives away his hiding place when Maggie begs off another dance and Alex looks about him and finally finds Peter tucked away in the corner.

Alex battles through the crowd - the village hall is heaving with every resident and a selection of tables for food and those too old, young, or tired to dance - and Peter makes a space beside him for Alex to slide into. “Ruth’s looking for you,” he says, looking rather knowing about Peter’s hiding place. His fingers, hidden from the others in the room, slip into Peter’s and squeeze, though, so perhaps the hiding isn’t really so unwelcome.

“After that performance?” Peter says, tilting his head at the dancefloor with as straight a face as he can sustain. Alex rolls his eyes and smiles. “She’ll be keeping us both safely on the sidelines, mark my words.”

Alex holds up a finger. “Ah, but she knows that you dance rather better than I,” he points out - with some pride, Peter thinks.

He offers Alex a dry look for it. “Our  _ sheep _ dance rather better than you,” he says, and Alex shoves his shoulder companionably for it. 

They lean into the wall together, hand in hand and watching the dancers rush in and out like waves and whirlpools kept in time by the pull of the music and the rule of the caller; it’s rather disproportionately calm on the edges, even as Peter feels temptation wash like breakers over his tired feet. He does rather like to dance. Instead, he angles his eyes to the side at Alex to catalogue the myriad small edges that have been sanded out of him this evening: his shoulders are looser, making his narrow frame seem almost broad; he stands straighter tonight than he has these past weeks and Peter is reminded that, when not hunched with worry, Alex has a good few inches on him; there is no tiny frown line carved heavily into the space between his brows. It is easy to miss, as they happen, the small marks of care that have wormed their way into normalcy during the heavy harvest season, but now that the work is done Peter can hardly believe that he and Ruth had ever not seen Alex’s burden of concern. He knows and loves that face too well to miss the slight improvements in bearing and countenance now, however. Alex bears the worry rather less well than Peter, it seems: as if, as the owner of the farm, Alex sees it as his responsibility to see that the weather is obliging at every opportunity. It is a drain upon him every year and yet a reasonable concern; for all that Mrs Kent’s comments had been deeply patronising, a crop failure would eat heavily into their small savings until it became a struggle to eat at all.

It’s why they dance now, of course. Sometimes, even when one is too tired to stand without leaning on a nearby wall, it’s really the only proper thing to do. It is a relief, of course, to have the harvest in and secured - but more so, to have Alex standing loose and easy at his side, tired out with dancing and not with fretting. The farming year is a rolling wheel, like the hoop and stick the children play with on the green: there are few pauses, and it must be kept spinning. But tonight, Peter wishes he could hold it a moment and wait a little longer before the real world rushes back in and it is time to worry after the ploughing, to allow his lovers to rest. He wishes for a faerie dance, a whirligig of movement and noise too fast and wonderful to leave where they might be kept tired and curiously without concerns forever and ever under the silken silver of the moon.

But he would not have it, not really. In order to breathe out so heavily as they do presently, and with as much satisfaction, one must hold that breath as rain thunders down at inopportune moments and stubbornly refuses to dry the frantically-assembled stooks; to nod in satisfaction at a job well done, the work must first be put in. Ruth’s jam never tastes so vivid as it does when it has taken Peter and Alex a good five minutes to wheedle and charm the spoonfuls from her, and the veritable feast before them tonight exists only because of the work they have put in already, and the work Peter knows Ruth will undertake all year long to keep the three of them well-fed and warm. The carefully hidden joy of being found by Ruth and dragged out over Alex’s delighted laughter, pretending reluctance and being ruthlessly heckled by their neighbours who tell him, quite rightly, that he never stood a chance of escaping this fate as he stands opposite Ruth’s sharp grin: all the delight of this lies in knowing how hard he worked for it, and how soon it will all end for another year.

Well, perhaps, Peter thinks as Ruth swings him enthusiastically round and round with her long coppery hair flung free of its bun and flying like a bright comet’s tail behind her, they shall find a reason to dance at Christmas, first. He loves it - and them - a little too well to let it go for an  _ entire _ year.

Peter allows Ruth to lead him through half a dozen further dances, content to simply follow along and endure good-naturedly the comments from the elder village gentlemen. Ruth just tips her face up at him, bouncing on her toes and offering a somewhat triumphant smile, at the teasing, and he shrugs helplessly back; perhaps Mr Chapman is right, and he ought to lead the dance and not have allowed Ruth to bully him into dancing in the first place and generally not give her  _ ideas, _ as Mr Chapman asserts that he would do in Peter’s place. Peter will not do that, however, and Ruth knows it, for why should he? Ruth is tremendously good at having ideas, and managing their cottage and finances and food, so Peter sees very little to gain and a great deal to lose - Ruth, most likely, for one - in spending any time at all preventing her from doing as she pleases. And, frankly, Peter would like to see Mr Chapman try.

After the last dance, when the village finally concedes that they are falling asleep on the borrowed benches and chairs and attempts to do so at home instead, Ruth tucks one hand into Peter’s arm and the other into Alex’s and tugs them into a tight wall. “Well done, gentlemen,” she says with pride humming warmly in her voice. “That ought to do for this year.”

Peter smiles fondly at her little frame tucked securely between theirs. “The spread went down well,” Alex says, squeezing her hand.

“Oh, is there any left?” Peter says, craning his neck to look over at the tables of food behind the bustle of a dance being tidied away.

“You cannot still be hungry,” Ruth says incredulously and Peter shrugs, not denying it.

“Peter’s always hungry,” Alex grins, voice warm. Peter shrugs at that, too, and Ruth and Alex laugh.

“It’s a credit to your cooking,” Peter says with mock-solemnity.

Ruth rolls her eyes. “Oh, not this again. We shan’t have any food left if you two carry on flattering!” Alex meets Peter’s eyes over her head, grinning brightly, and they press in close on either side of her as if to press fondness in upon her, too. She makes a face, grinning. “Really, you boys. Go on, off: Alex, get the gig ready; Peter, you come with me and fetch all these leftovers you’re so keen on.”

“Yes, Ruth,” Alex and Peter chorus cheerfully, and do as they are told. 

Peter had meant it - what he had, in his own way and through actions rather than words, said to Mr Chapman and all his other neighbours: he is content to be led. He will do as he is told, secure in the knowledge that Ruth and Alex will not lead him astray or ask more of him than he is capable of doing; obedience is, after all, the mother of success and the bride of safety, or whatever it is he was taught at Sunday school and has largely forgotten since. And he is content to work: to carry Ruth’s heavy dishes and load them as she instructs in the gig, to stand and hold them while she and Alex struggle to remember how they ever got them all here in the first place, to put one broad, solid hand at the small of Alex’s back and push him up behind the horse as all his exhaustion from the sheep drive and the harvest and the dance abruptly catch up with him and leave Alex stranded half-in and half-out of the gig. And is he not well-rewarded for it? Is the reward not sweeter for the effort put into its creation? For the night is cool and clear, the road smooth and the ride gentle, and under the careful observation of the stars Ruth is breathing slowly and steadily against Peter’s collarbone as she dozes with her head resting easily upon his shoulder, and Alex is whistling a jig with sharp breaths just beginning to cloud silver and chilled in the moonlight. Together, they roll contentedly home, and the year rolls steadily onward.


End file.
